Rubenerd

Having just spent the last few days talking about my own social anxiety, awkwardness and questions about my point in life, the universe, everything and 42, I thought I’d stop being so inwardly focused and address someone else’s post discussing similar issues. We’re a confederacy of introverts here aren’t we? :).

WARNING: This is one of the longest posts I’ve ever done out of over 2,700 2,570 of them (whoops!). You’ve been warned.

I’ll start with a maddening rhetorical question, maddening if only because I hate rhetorical questions personally, and I can never spell rhetorical. Who do you think is the greatest, nicest, most intelligent person on the internet? If your answer is Ruben Schade, nobody likes a suck up, so stop it. The answer is a person who, if you’re not a wheathead or even know what a wheathead is, you’ve probably never heard of.

Meeting is only two chars away from Greeting

I first met Jim Kloss when I perfected my bicycle powered trans conductive reverse warp drive which allowed me to travel backwards in time for brief moments. I landed in a small park in Ohio in the 1980s and saw a business man through a window frantically typing code into a blinking computer. His eyes were bloodshot which suggested he’d either been staring at that screen for an extended period of time, or management at the company he was working for had needlessly frustrated him with empty rhetoric (there’s that word again) and bureaucratic nonsense, or most likely a combination of the two. I approached the window, but before I could get close enough to say hello and to see what he was doing, a gigantic guard dog lept out from nowhere and clamped his jaw onto my left leg. That little stunt trapped me in 1980s Ohio for weeks because my leg was too sore to start up the bicycle powered trans conductive reverse warp drive to get home. True story.

The second time I met Jim was another accident, it was towards the end of 2004 and I had found out about this term called New Time Radio by Frank Nora, a friendly, nerdy prolific internet radio show producer who talked about all sorts of cool, weird, unconventional stuff. Through that I learned about podcasting which led me to download iPodder and subscribe to this Whole Wheat Radio comedy audio magazine which from the sound of it was clips from a guy’s rants on an internet radio station.

I’d been used to sending fan mail to people and never getting replies, which was why I was so thrilled that I got a response from Jim within a day of messaging him the first time. I was so taken aback I decided to investigate further, and within a year I’d bought a dozen CDs through his website and had even got my dad listening.

It’s trust, stupid!

This post isn’t about Jim’s Whole Wheat Radio independent music venture, it’s about Jim himself. Over the years I’d come to trust Jim and consider him a friend because in a world of internet stars so engrossed by their own fame they consider themselves demi gods of the online realm worthy of worship, Jim has always been modest and underplayed his own significance and awesomeness, to use the technical terms.

Perhaps as a result of this instant rapport for some reason I started emailing him with problems I was facing and asking for advice. Both our mums (sorry Jim, moms!) passed on at around the same time, and in a very selfish way it was great to talk to someone with similar interests and focus during that time. If he ever resented these messages, he never let it show and always took them with gentle good humour and refreshingly candid advice. Much as Laura Douglass was better than the school psychiatrist, Jim has been better than any councillor I’ve seen. No doubt his modest nature will cause him to dismiss such claims as ridiculous, but unless he hacks my blog (and given it’s WordPress it’d probably be simple for a PHP wizard like him to do!) the claim is there and there’s nothing he can do about it!

Getting off track are we Ruben?

Anyway I belabour all this pointless crap because after hearing our problems for so long he finally reached out to us a couple of days ago in a wiki entry. I could describe its contents, but best to let the man speak for himself:

…by comparison, Zettai Ryouiki is a recent anime fandom term used to describe female characters who wear super long socks with…

Well that was clearly the wrong quote. Let me try again.

I’m in the midst of a mid-life identity crisis. I hope it doesn’t include hot flashes.

Examples colliding and breeding in my skull cavity for days/weeks/months include: brief/detailed; funny/serious; personal/business; brain/soul; technical/simple; political/neutered; controversial/Boy Scout; semi-infinite self-created possibilities; Jim; feelings; family; etc;

He then goes on to detail his dissolution with Big Mouths who obsessively detail their lives without ever coming to any profound realisations while sparking anger and frustration with other Big Mouths who disagree. Of course my summary does no justice to his words, so stop being lazy and read it. Don't worry, my page will still be here when you're done :).

Setting things straight

Reminiscent of my recent post inspired by Monnie and EdibleHat, Jim then discusses a few points about himself that if you don’t like, you can shove it!

"I’m a human being"

You are a human being Jim, with your own opinions and thoughts and your own abilities that you are damned good at. People who dispute these are not worth your time and energy. I know it’s pointless advice that’s easier said than done, but it sounded profound in my head.

"I am a big mouth"

That may be the case, but you know things and have been around the block enough times to have formed opinions grounded in these apparently trivial things called reality, common sense and fact that others are willing to dismiss because they’re an anonymous guy behind a computer, or a political pundit who got where they are by selling out, sucking up and using sound bytes. In other words, you’re a person someone like me can genuinly look up to. Appreciate for a moment how rare that is.

"I am painfully shy, insecure and thin-skinned. I am incredibly gregarious, pompous and proud. It all depends on mood, situation and sunspots"

No wait, I’m the one who’s all those things! If you figure out how to overcome the shyness, let me know, but whatever you do don’t change any of the other things.

"I reserve the right to change this agreement at any time."

Damn straight. Personally I wish to continue our association, but if others don’t, their loss not ours.

"Keep your sense of humor."

(Damn straight)^1024.

If this post were a circle, it’d have no end.
How terrifying.

I’m just going to come right out and say it, no matter how sappy it sounds. You are an awesome person Jim and I believe I speak for many people when I say we’ve been privelidged to have you in our lives. If you do decide to make changes, I hope you do them because you want to, and not because you’re feeling pressured by anybody else or anything else. We will be staying tuned, and will support you in any decisions you make.

And if you’re ever in Singapore or Adelaide there’s a manhug, coffee, a grilled cheese sandwich and a philosopical discussion about telling Sh*t from Shinola waiting for you, choose whatever from that list you deem appropriate :)

Peace, health and happiness my friend,
~ Ruben

Final thoughts

We’re all zippy little bags of energy – electrons excited enough to energize as light for a few milliseconds on life’s CRT. I know. I get it. We’re equally unimportant and hilariously grandiose in our overblown sense of self-importance within the Universes. I know, I know. I really get that.

I would have hoped my life would be on an LCD by now. Perhaps LCDs would help shield us from burnout. Get it? Burn in? CRTs? Sounded witty in my head. I’m hungry, wish I had a DVD spinning stomach.

Compared to some other folks on the net I'm not obsessed with language when it's not used properly, heck my posts here are constantly full of grammar mistakes. One of the few things that drives me mad is people's interchangeable use of lose and loose… still!

Despite thousands of derogatory motivational posters and people's signatures on forums explaining the difference, people still can't seem to grasp the difference between these two words. What's worrying is it’s not just people on MySpace-ish personal blogs talking about how awesome they think alcopops are, even commentators on Slashdot of all places do it. Slashdot! Slash dot dash dot slash dot dash dot slash dot dash dot slash dot com.

For people whom English is a second language this is a perfectly understandable mistake to make, English is quite a nonsensical language, but for those who grew up using it there's no excoose, sorry excose, sorry excuse.

Thanks to The Sydney Writer's Blog for the photo; their page also demonstrates the proper use of loose and lose. I'm not going to explain the difference here because aside from them plenty of people already have in hundreds of places as well.

Hey, and I used the word their and not they're and there! Good grief when I start learning German people are going to grill me.

Got an email this morning from Google claiming one of their advertising products will be retroactively branded as DoubleClick. Huh?

Hello,

We have renamed Google Ad Planner to DoubleClick Ad Planner. Next time you log on, you will notice our new logo. You can continue to use Ad Planner whether or not you are a DoubleClick customer. The product remains free and open for everyone.

[…] Since Ad Planner’s media research and planning tools are a significant part of these efforts, we’ve brought it under the DoubleClick brand. We’ll continue to dedicate the same Google and DoubleClick engineering and product resources to the newly renamed DoubleClick Ad Planner. Only the name is changing!

The copyright notice still says Google, and the URI still points to a Google domain, but they're giving it the name of a previously acquired business instead. It'd be like Boeing releasing the Dreamliner as the McDonnell Douglas MD-13, with a tiny little By Boeing graphic next to it.

Oh well, I suppose they have their reasons. Heck when I was a kid I thought the aviation company was called Boing.

Both my other posts today were serious and drawn out, so I needed something fun and pointless ^_^. Ah how art styles have changed…

For what it's worth, making a graphic work well with transparent backgrounds is surprisingly difficult. Mac applications get away with it by using shadows with gradual alpha transparency on their high resolution icons. The graphic of Ami, sorry Sailor Mercury (don't worry your secret identity is safe with me!) only works on white, which come to think of it defeats the purpose of having it transparent, doesn't it?

The last time I posted a pointless transparent graphic post was in 2008. I had such a crush on the seiyū for Ami in the anime when I was growing up, but I still think that other post was funnier, even if it was just as pointless.

I got a blog comment from Monnie on my recent South Aussie elections post which led me to her cupcakes blog, which led me to her other blog where she talks about an idea she got from @edible_hat about goals for 2010. Whew, that was a long and needlessly convoluted sentence.

Anyway we're already almost 3 months into the new year, but I figured I'd try this myself, only instead of coming up with my own goals I would shamelessly rip off some of their goals instead. Recycling reduces resource use, you see. And because I'm a nerd I have to start counting from 0.

• Declutter
• Worry less about what people say about me
• Start my own personal archive
• Work out what’s going on with uni, and finish off my degree
• Use random computer parts lying around
• Learn to cook more
• Keep being me
• Choose a city to get old in

0. Declutter (~ Monnie)

A really good idea, and one I've already started implementing. I spent much of my holiday back in Singapore getting rid of computer stuff I don't need and scanning documents to shred. Last check I'd got rid of over 70,000 pages which is a fair number of boxes worth, as well as several large packing boxes of old computer keyboards, cables and CRT monitors.

In an admission that would make any Buddhist happy, I really need to get over my attachment to objects, before they really start controlling my life. I won't throw away my first computer though :).

My aim is to finish the year with less stuff than I started with for the first time, and to base my purchasing decisions as much on necessity and the space such things take up instead of just price.

1. Worry less about what people think/say about me (~ Monnie)

As you're all already bored of reading here, I'm a terribly shy and socially awkward person in real life and that needs to change, firstly by worrying less about what people think about me. People like Monnie and Edible_Hat are awesome enough that they could coast on it, but for me I'd need to work on it some more.

Being self conscious is such a crushing emotion to overcome when I leave the house each morning. Not sure how one goes about fixing that though, maybe getting a haircut?

2. Start my own personal archive (~ EdibleHat)

I'd already started doing this to a certain degree with my scanning, but the way he phrased this idea is simply brilliant. To take it literally, I've been using a tiny SQLite3 database for my personal stuff for a long time, what'd be great is to scan even more stuff and collate it all with timestamps and subjects in a database too. Because I essentially live in two places this means I could carry more stuff with me virtually!

Been looking at Bento for the Mac which looks perfect, but I'm doing just fine with SQLite3 and my crappy but usable Python interface for it. Should create a nice little ncurses app for it :).

3. Work out what’s going on with uni, and finish off my degree (~ EdibleHat)

This really resonated with me. I've been studying on and off for family and personal reasons since 2005 and I really need to finish. If that involves transferring because the current university I'm attending has been inflexible and cruel then I need to get my arse into gear and do that.

4. Use the random computer parts lying around here to build a file server. (~ EdibleHat)

I managed to build several machines from parts while I was in Singapore, but instead of a file server I have them all doing Folding@Home to find cures for diseases. It's too late for my mum, but I figure I don't have a medical degree so someone handy around a computer this is my way of helping others. What's cool is I can use DynDNS and remotely connect to these machines through SSH from here in Adelaide and check on their progress!

I added this here because it's proof I actually managed to do something on this list!

5. Learn to cook more (~ EdibleHat)

I tried Vietnamese last week for the first time (in Kuala Lumpur of all places). I'd love to learn how to cook that, it's so fresh, healthy and tasty! I can cook all kinds of German stuff but that's my practical limit. Must be the genes :).

6. Keep being me (~ Monnie)

I don't want to equate my own personal and family struggles with Monnie's, but that stated goal is simply awesome! Again putting it into practise might be tough, but I'm going to try. I'm a computer nerd who doesn't like getting drunk, going to nightclubs and spends too much time in coffee shops working on puzzles late at night while chilling to some jazzy Michael Franks. I watch anime. I'm an atheist. I like grilled cheese sandwiches. Take THAT world!

7. Choose a city to get old in (~ Me!)

Okay, throwing one in that I came up with :). I'd been feeling so disconnected with all the places I've been in most of my life because I've never been anywhere long enough to have roots. Singapore has been the only exception because I spent my teenage years there and my dad's still there. It's where I had my first crush. It's where I had my first job. It's where I went to high school. It's where I fell down the stairs and broke my first laptop.

Still, I'd like to be able to have the guts just to pick up and go to Munich and learn German, or Toronto, or Dublin, or Seoul and learn Korean, or Hong Kong and learn Cantonese, or Kyoto and learn Japanese for a few years. Or acknowledge that I'm in love with Singapore and that I should go back there in my own right instead of on a green card attached to my dad.

Australia is a nice place with friendly people, but I'm really only an Aussie on my passport and with a few of my mannerisms. Studying here is good, but I don't see my future here. Actually just acknowledging that has made me feel good, maybe I can move on after all.

Your turn!

What about you, how many of your 2010 goals have you messed up already?

Not many tech posts today, getting up on my soap box. I arrived back in Adelaide just as the South Australian elections are starting to heat up. This post shows a letter response I sent to sent to sent to sent to sent to (sorry, got stuck in an infinite loop) Trevor Grace who sent me a leaflet in the mail for his AbortSA party.

Ruben Schade
Mawson Lakes, SA 5095
Australia, Earth

Dear Trevor Grace of AbortSA,

Regarding your 2010 South Australian state election leaflet

Despite a "No Junk Mail" sign on my mailbox, I recently received your leaflet for AbortSA. Suffice to say I could argue for women’s rights including the right to an abortion if…

• she’s been raped and/or subject to abuse
• pregnancy will endanger her life
• her birth control measures unintentionally failed
• or for any other reason a grown woman with full suffrage under the law who can make her own decisions deems necessary and who doesn’t need to justify to you

…but we clearly have different views and such an exercise would get us nowhere. What I will say sir is that what a woman does with her own body — or a man with his for that matter — is none of the State’s business.

I can tell you care deeply about this issue and I honestly and sincerely respect your convictions, but this debate belongs in the wider public discourse alongside discussions on education, safe sex and violence against women, not in a Parliament chamber. Legislating morality like this sir is a dangerous path to tread with grave ramifications. I need only point to elections with our brothers and sisters in America to demonstrate this, or Malaysia where I spent part of my life growing up.

I would also advise (nay, encourage) you to rethink your daft and questionable comparison between whaling and abortion. I don’t see how belittling the intelligence of your voters will allow you to enter public office. A more apt comparison would be women’s rights and the global emancipation movement, though I doubt that would gel with your party’s stated objectives. Perhaps best to leave comparisons out entirely.

I will be publishing this letter along with your leaflet on my website at rubenerd.com/trevor-grace-leaflet/ in which you’re free to post your own comments if you so desire.

Finally as a matter of disclosure, I am a 23 year old who has never got a women pregnant, though I’d love to be a dad one day if friendly and wickedly funny Ms. Right enters my life and we adopt. If the State permits of course.

Peace, health and happiness,
Ruben Schade

And here I was thinking Australia was above all this biased, scaremongering stuff in elections. Hah.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Taken on my iTelephone in KL, Malaysia

Just came back this evening from our (brief) trip to KL, as evidenced from the view from our hotel window above! I lived here in 2007-08 so it was good to go to all my old haunts. Will be posting proper photos and whatnot later this week.

We've got Tuesday in Singapore (going to make the most of it), then 09:00 on Wednesday morning I'm back to Adelaide to face those "people" at that university. Can't wait.

With that in mind they're will probably be a further interruption to your regularly scheduled blog posts here. If you feel the urge to read more Ruben sanctioned nonsense, feel free to browse the archive or barring that visit any of the fine folks on the site sidebar. They're far more interesting, succinct, eloquent and funny than me anyway.

Danke schön, see you on the other side ^_^.

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

k-on-blu-ray-panchira-12.jpg (JPEG Image, 1382×777 pixels) – Scaled (80%)

(categories: kon anime cute funny screenshots)

AnandTech Bench (beta): SYSMark 2007 – Overall

(categories: cpu benchmark hardware intel amd)

PassMark Software – CPU Benchmarks – List of Benchmarked CPUs

(categories: cpu benchmark hardware intel amd)

OpenOffice.org Forum :: red triangle in table (cell overflow indicator?)

(categories: openoffice howto software forums)

The OpenOffice.org Wiki – OpenOffice.org Wiki

"This wiki is for all projects associated with OpenOffice.org (OOo). It has a good focus on resources for developers. Also other projects work more and more on the wiki."

(categories: openoffice software reference documentation wiki)

Stammtisch – Singapore Food Reviews, Promotions and Information

(categories: food singapore stammtisch restaurant)

After getting all these hate letters from people who didn't approve of what I thought were fairly tame commentaries on the compulsory Australian internet firewall, I decided to take an hour or so off this afternoon and address their concerns. This post is for the first email.

Dear Reuben,

You obviously don’t realize this because you’re a whiny little kid but you are the reason why an internet filter is excactly what Australians need.

I'm 23, and my name is Ruben, hence the address of this site.

I have read your news coverage on your web-site and I have been horrified at your biased attitude.

I'm flattered you consider my web-site [sic] a form of news coverage, but a comparison with an opinion column or page would probably be more apt. Blogs run by individuals tend to analyse rather than report.

You spew your lies and filth and slander against our elected officials and don’t give them the respect they deserve so you can watch your porn and disgusting Japanese animation shows and speak hatred PRENTEDING YOU ARE SAVING FREE SPEECH.

You started losing me here sir/madam. Still, you took the time to email me and I will address your concerns.

First, I did not lie or slander any politicians, nor did I swear at them or post any "filth". If you can quote some examples of where I've done any of these alleged deeds, feel free to point them out to me.

Secondly, respect is never automatically deserved, it must be earned. If our politicians refuse to acknowledge any of the legitimate technological or philosophical qualms with a mandatory filter which I and many of my fellow bloggers have discussed, they deserve to be questioned. This is democracy working.

Well I have news for you Reuben television stations, newspapers, radio stations, and magazines are all regulated to keep smut and hatred out and the Internet should be treated without any difference.

At first it does seems that simplistic, but unfortunately I think you've been mislead. Just from a technical standpoint (leaving aside ethics), censorship is enforceable in traiditonal media because there are a finite number of television stations, magazines and so forth. Censorship in these media are also done manually by editors.

Again just talking from a technical standpoint, the internet is virtually limitless which means any form of manual "editing" is impossible. The result is plenty of questionable material would always be available even if Conroy's censorship team worked for thousands of years. Secondly, whereas it is impossible to sidestep the irreversible censorship of television, magazines and so on, it is trivially easy to sidestep blocks online, which you may not have been informed of. There are plenty of other reasons why even if we wanted a filter it would not work, all of which I've discussed exhaustively here.

The irony is if you'd sent this rude email to me with the filter you want in place, there's a good chance it wouldn't have come through. If you are going to demand respect from people, you should practise what you preach.

Peace, health and happiness,
Ruben